Hi Jonathan, Rufus and all, We've made some baby steps towards supporting your Open Knowledge Definition. http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?OpenKnowledgeDefinition It seemed like a good start just to translate the one-sentence summary "A piece of knowledge is open if you are free to use, reuse, and redistribute it". We have that for Luganda, Kiswahili and Lithuanian. Also, Josephat Ndibalema is interested to translate the full definition into Kiswahili. I don't want to pay people directly because I'm trying to develop and "economy of dreams" where we avoid cash and we help each other's projects instead, where we can. So it will be slow going, but we're interested in the long run. One idea as you can see below is to publish an "ebook" explaining open knowledge in a variety of local languages. We could think about what's most useful. Perhaps avoiding legalistic language. Also, for our culture, I want to emphasize the importance of the Public Domain, which is "free" in a very different (and often, very relevant) sense as compared to copyleft alternatives (like Creative Commons). For example, it's unfortunate that Wikipedia is not in the Public Domain, but especially for local and regional languages. These are points for learning from each other as we work together. I share my letter about our chat and endeavors. Thank you, Andrius, [email protected] -----------------------------------
I invite us all to our chat room http://www.worknets.org/chat/ on Thursday, September 10, at 16:00 Kenya time, 14:00 London, 9:00 New York. We'll chat about publishing ebooks in local and regional languages (like Kiswahili, Hindi, Lithuanian, Luo) that can be read (as JPG images) with DVD players, mobile phones, digital picture frames, ebook readers, etc. We'd love to work together with other communities. Many of our endeavors are converging: * Ricardo (UK) has written many helpful pages about making the most of marginal Internet access, as in Africa: http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Ricardo * He suggested that we convert text to JPG images so they could be read on DVD players, mobile phones, etc. http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?OnlineTextConverter * I implemented this: http://www.worknets.org/software/ebook/ You can enter a text and it will output a zipped file with JPG images, typically, one per paragraph. * Josephat Ndibalema (Tanzania) is championing the creation of learning materials in Kiswahili (see our wiki http://www.worknets.org/sw/ ) * Graham Knight (UK) promotes DIY Solar, small do-it-yourself solar panels for recharging mobile phones, and we could create related ebooks. http://biodesign.webeden.co.uk * Franz Nahrada (Austria) wants us to engage the participants of http://www.thingiverse.com (sharing "digital designs for physical objects") to work together on real-life challenges and we agreed (with Ralf Schlatterbeck (Austria)) that this will be the first "semantic" project for our Worknets Interface Architecture Committee. * Ananya Guha (India) has suggested children's books and that is also a focus of Masimba Biriwasha (Zimbabwe). Indeed, it would be good for us to collect, share and write children's stories and study them in terms of the values that we and they are espousing. That's a great way to research our own values, including our deepest values, and to create a new culture, growing with children. * Janet Feldman's (USA) Rising Voices guide for Blogging Positively and other such materials are also great. http://rising.globalvoicesonline.org/guides/ As you see, we need help: * Learning what content might be relevant to publish. * Strategizing the publishing path (which might include converting EPUB and PDF files, using Public Domain resources like books http://www.gutenberg.org , http://www.feedbooks.com , audio books http://www.librivox.org ) and even interweaving (much like a slide show) text, photos, audio, video. * Creating software for conversion and for making publishing easy with good results. * Exploring hardware options and even hacking new ones. * Translating materials. * Organizing publishing and distribution networks. * Building contacts and developing business opportunities. We'd also like to learn about any endeavors you may have that we might work together on http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Endeavors as well as your "deepest value in life" and "questions that you don't know the answer to, but wish to answer" http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Values and "what would you like to do with your life"? http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Dreams and "how can we help"? http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Tasks Worknets is a culture for independent thinkers, that is, for focusing on those who are able to work even by themselves, are willing to give and share in the Public Domain, and so with our help might remake all of our world, so that what we believe is what happens. In 1998, I founded Minciu Sodas http://www.ms.lt as a business (and haven) for serving and organizing independent thinkers. I'm taking the lead to organize Worknets as a broader culture and network based on minimum requirements for maximum sharing http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Charter Our endeavor above is a good occassion to seek liaisons with a wide variety of groups such as Rising Voices, Yi-Tan, Learning Communities, Ugabytes, Super Happy Dev Club and many others. http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Liaisons I hope we might find people who could build bridges amongst groups, summarize what people are working on in a group, and share endeavors from other groups. Such summaries and related exchanges would be assumed to be in the Public Domain, for participating groups. I am actively looking for liaisons and also for modest stipends for their help. I prefaced my letter with "Mornflake outreach" because this summer such outreach was made possible by work we did for Leon Benjamin http://www.winningbysharing.net on behalf of Mornflake cereal http://www.mornflake.com and their online video contest http://www.mornflakecompetition.com Leon paid us to engage online communities and agreed that we focus on reaching out to them and supporting their endeavors, and credit Mornflake for their support, rather than promote Mornflake cereal directly. The groups that tolerate us are those with whom we can effectively build such a network. Leon and I think that we can find more such clients to support our outreach, and we can share this work as well. I thus appreciate your understanding and support (and Mornflake's, too). http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?MornflakeOutreach Please share your thoughts, how might we help each other, and what groups would like us to reach out to them? Thank you! Andrius Andrius Kulikauskas Minciu Sodas http://www.ms.lt [email protected] +370 699 30003 Dukiskes, Lithuania _______________________________________________ okfn-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.okfn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss
